If it weren’t for the
“backfire effect”
— the strange psychological phenomenon behind our propensity for self-righteousness — changing people’s minds wouldn’t be such an
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. One might even say that moving minds — our own as well as those of others — is among the most effortful labor there is.

Nearly half a millennium before modern psychologists identified the three elements of persuasion —
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— French physicist, philosopher, inventor, and mathematician
Blaise Pascal
(June 19, 1623–August 19, 1662) intuited this mechanism as he arrived at a great truth about the secret of persuasion: Pascal came to see that the surest way of defeating the erroneous views of others is not by bombarding the bastion of their self-righteousness but by slipping in through the backdoor of their beliefs.

For Against was a collaboration between Radar and Loughborough University's Dr Gillian Whiteley and Dr Jane Tormey, RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa). It brought together research into the radical traditions of the political pamphlet and contemporary art practice. Collaborating arists and collectives were Ruth Beale, Freee, Ferenc Gróf, Patrick Goddard, Little Riot Press, Ciara Phillips and Rory Pilgrim.

Comprising a two day public event, an exhibition and the production of a new book:
Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer
(publishedpart of the RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt RaRa book series with Bloomsbury), For and Against: Art, Politics and the Pamphlet responded to research into the political pamphlet and explored the relevance of the pamphlet for contemporary art practice.

(Photo: Julian Hughes)

Campus Exhibition, open throughout summer, 2017
Martin Gallery Exhibition Space, Loughborough University, LE11 3TUThe exhibition shared elements of the project, including new pamphlets by artists Patrick Goddard, Ferenc Gróf and Rory Pilgrim, commissioned by Radar; a selection of historical pamphlets from the Art of the Pamphlet exhibition; documentation of a series of pamphlet workshops led by artists Freee, Ruth Beale, Ciara Phillips and Little Riot Press and artworks inspired by For Against workshops led by artists Chiara Dellerba and Sarah Green, and writer Alison Mott.

Campus Exhibition, open throughout summer, 2017

The Art of the Pamphlet, open until Saturday 25 June, 2017
Charnwood Museum, Loughborough LE11 3BJCurated by Gillian Whitely this exhibition explored the local, private and public collections of pamphlets, their visual rhetoric, materiality, reproducibility and the ways in which they lend themselves to topicality.